Trump as tragicomedy

[Maddy]

I'm intentionally refusing to become derailed into a debate over specific tactics, when the most important, overarching question remains unanswered: What is the crime that is being investigated, who is believed to have committed that crime, and what evidence is there to warrant the investigation of the same?

Doesn't it trouble you, even a little, that nobody can come up with an answer to this question?

[ochotona]

My understanding is the crime that is being looked for is obstruction of justice. Maybe the campaign contacts with non-US persons were legal, if they occurred, but one better not lie about them in an official interaction with authorities. The Martha Stewart effect.

[Libertarian666]

My understanding is the crime that is being looked for is obstruction of justice. Maybe the campaign contacts with non-US persons were legal, if they occurred, but one better not lie about them in an official interaction with authorities. The Martha Stewart effect.

But those crimes are the result, not the cause, of the investigation, as they would not have existed without the investigation.

So that doesn't answer the question that Maddy asked.

[ochotona]

My understanding is the crime that is being looked for is obstruction of justice. Maybe the campaign contacts with non-US persons were legal, if they occurred, but one better not lie about them in an official interaction with authorities. The Martha Stewart effect.

But those crimes are the result, not the cause, of the investigation, as they would not have existed without the investigation.

So that doesn't answer the question that Maddy asked.

I agree with you in the abstract, obstruction charges, if levied, would be like a "secondary accident" spawned off by the investigation itself. One could argue in an alternative universe that if no one had ever investigated, no one would've had to "opportunity to lie" (if it happened... we don't know).

But America is the land of opportunity. We set up stings which give car thieves the opportunity to "steal" remotely controlled cars, and then get arrested. We give terrorists the opportunity to buy "bombs" from law enforcement, "detonate them" with cell phone codes and then get arrested.

I see the same principle at work here. Is it politically motivated? Without a doubt. Does that make an obstruction crime, if it occurred, any less of a crime? No. For me, the moral of the story is, don't conduct yourself and talk stupidly and catch yourself a case.

[WiseOne]

I'm kinda with Maddy on this one. Mueller's investigation is way too open-ended - and to show that I'm not saying this due to a bias toward Trump I will also say that I hold the same opinion of Ken Starr's investigation into the Clintons.

Mueller's investigation started out as a probe of Russian "meddling" but has now evolved to an obstruction of justice case. That should never have happened, although the Flynn/Comey affair is certainly concerning and deserves to be investigated - but separately from the Russia investigation, and by another group.

The Russian meddling part has been conducted in such a way that it's not unreasonable for someone to conclude that it could be retitled "Investigate Trump because we want to impeach him and get rid of him because we don't like him." Regardless of how desirous that outcome may be, this is wrong-headed and frankly a dangerous precedent. Which was already, unfortunately, set by the Ken Starr investigation (at first going after Whitewater, then ending up with the salacious Monica Lewinsky affair).

Like Maddy, I don't think "meddling in the election" is specific enough to warrant a criminal investigation. You can't prosecute someone for an intention. They have to have acted upon it, before the law can get involved. So far, all we know is that some parties that probably included people from Russia (unclear if that means overseen by the government) hacked the DNC email server, and that one of those parties (unclear if Russian or not) then passed the info to Wikileaks. The content of the emails did the rest of the job, but as far as I know they were not altered in any way. To this has been added hints that this was done at the behest of the Trump campaign, but the evidence for this is circumstantial at best. An investigation into these facts was probably warranted, but when it came up against a dead end it should have stopped there.

Instead of closing as it should have, the investigation has shifted to Flynn/Comey. BTW I doubt Flynn will have anything of importance to say on the Russia probe, because if he did they'd have given him immunity to encourage him to talk. They have not.

[ochotona]

I'm kinda with Maddy on this one. Mueller's investigation is way too open-ended - and to show that I'm not saying this due to a bias toward Trump I will also say that I hold the same opinion of Ken Starr's investigation into the Clintons.

Maybe I just like the drama. I was cheering on Ken Starr, now I'm cheering on Mueller. You know who we have to blame for all this prosecutorial (over)reach? Nixon.

[Maddy]

Russia-gate enthusiasts are thrilled over the guilty plea of President Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI about pre-inauguration conversations with the Russian ambassador, but the case should alarm true civil libertarians.

What is arguably most disturbing about this case is that then-National Security Adviser Flynn was pushed into a perjury trap by Obama administration holdovers at the Justice Department who concocted an unorthodox legal rationale for subjecting Flynn to an FBI interrogation four days after he took office, testing Flynn’s recollection of the conversations while the FBI agents had transcripts of the calls intercepted by the National Security Agency.

In other words, the Justice Department wasn’t seeking information about what Flynn said to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak – the intelligence agencies already had that information. Instead, Flynn was being quizzed on his precise recollection of the conversations and nailed for lying when his recollections deviated from the transcripts.

For Americans who worry about how the pervasive surveillance powers of the U.S. government could be put to use criminalizing otherwise constitutionally protected speech and political associations, Flynn’s prosecution represents a troubling precedent.

Though Flynn clearly can be faulted for his judgment, he was, in a sense, a marked man the moment he accepted the job of national security adviser. In summer 2016, Democrats seethed over Flynn’s participation in chants at the Republican National Convention to “lock her [Hillary Clinton] up!”

The article goes on to recount, move by move, how the investigation itself was a set-up designed to manufacture a crime.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-0 ... mike-flynn

[Mr Vacuum]

The article goes on to recount, move by move, how the investigation itself was a set-up designed to manufacture a crime.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-0 ... mike-flynn

Thanks for the link, Maddy. If Yates’s motivation was as the article describes and Flynn innocently flubbing the FBI’s quiz is all the evidence they had to go on, it is, as they write, very troubling as an example of what can be done to someone using surveillance. But what do you make of Flynn’s statement about his faith in God and needing to set things right and the legal analysis that says prosecutors don’t give a deal like his unless they get real dirt on someone higher up the chain?

[dualstow]

Money laundering, I believe, is one of them. Isn’t it?

[Maddy]

But what do you make of Flynn’s statement about his faith in God and needing to set things right and the legal analysis that says prosecutors don’t give a deal like his unless they get real dirt on someone higher up the chain?

Your guess is as good as mine. I would surmise from what's transpired to date that the same characters who appear to have set a perjury trap for Flynn are not beyond manufacturing evidence of even bigger and better crimes. Or maybe there's something in his personal life that he's being blackmailed with. Can anyone seriously doubt that, once targeted by these lawless sociopaths, you either do things their way or you're done?

This government is not what we thought it was.

[Libertarian666]

But what do you make of Flynn’s statement about his faith in God and needing to set things right and the legal analysis that says prosecutors don’t give a deal like his unless they get real dirt on someone higher up the chain?

Your guess is as good as mine. I would surmise from what's transpired to date that the same characters who appear to have set a perjury trap for Flynn are not beyond manufacturing evidence of even bigger and better crimes. Or maybe there's something in his personal life that he's being blackmailed with. Can anyone seriously doubt that, once targeted by these lawless sociopaths, you either do things their way or you're done?

This government is not what we thought it was.

It is what I thought it was.

[Maddy]

And if all this doesn't make your morning crazy enough, it seems Kim Jong Un is one of Time Magazine's nominees for Man of the Year. Even more bizarre is the fact that this stroke of utter genius could, standing alone, avert a worldwide nuclear crisis.

[Libertarian666]

And if all this doesn't make your morning crazy enough, it seems Kim Jong Un is one of Time Magazine's nominees for Man of the Year. Even more bizarre is the fact that this stroke of utter genius could, standing alone, avert a worldwide nuclear crisis.

Hitler was Man of the Year too. Time explains that this doesn't mean the best person, just the most important person (or now, possibly thing or group).

[Maddy]

And if all this doesn't make your morning crazy enough, it seems Kim Jong Un is one of Time Magazine's nominees for Man of the Year. Even more bizarre is the fact that this stroke of utter genius could, standing alone, avert a worldwide nuclear crisis.

Hitler was Man of the Year too. Time explains that this doesn't mean the best person, just the most important person (or now, possibly thing or group).

Exactly. I'm thinking that a recording contract, replete with Michael Jackson costume, might be just the thing to top it off.

[Maddy]

Okay Moda, I didn't go looking for a source establishing the absence of a crime or any evidence of a crime, but I couldn't help but notice this article, which just appeared in the headlines this evening.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy says there is still no discernible evidence of any conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, and he said special counsel Robert Mueller is effectively on a “fishing expedition” to find criminal behavior of some kind.
* * *
“The usual thing in the United States is that there’s a crime, so we assign a prosecutor,” he explained. “Here, there’s no crime. We assign a prosecutor. We tell him to go find a crime.”

And thus far, McCarthy said Mueller hasn’t found what he was hired to find.

“He’s gone about his investigation as a kind of broad fishing expedition within those very broad parameters,” McCarthy said. “If they had a crime that was the predicate for this investigation, it would have been conducted a different way. But he wasn’t directed to investigate a crime. He was given this very broad mandate.”

The investigation is receiving enormous coverage in the wake of Mueller indicting former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for making false statements to the FBI in January.

McCarthy said many people assume this is a sign that bigger charges are coming for the likes of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and possibly even the president himself for colluding with Russia. He said that assumption is based on a flawed understanding of law.

“Collusion is kind of a loaded word. All it means is concerted activity. What prosecutors care about is conspiracy, not collusion. Conspiracy is an agreement to violate a particular federal law. In this case, the law that they’re most likely talking about is some form of espionage by the Russians targeting the 2016 election,” McCarthy said.

“I never thought they had a case on that. I haven’t seen anything to suggest it. What we’ve seen with the three sets of charges is quite the opposite.”

http://www.wnd.com/2017/12/mccarthy-zer ... mp-russia/

[stuper1]

The whole idea that Russia is a credible threat to the U.S. is laughable on its face, and thus it seems obvious to me that it's just another bogeyman manufactured by the establishment media on behalf of the military-industrial complex.

[WiseOne]

It's well known that Russia did work to support Trump in the election...

Then you must have access to information not available to the rest of us. "Well known" is not the same as "there are hints that", and neither meet the required standard of "evidence of criminal activity." It's too easy to forget these nuances when the convenient assumption that hints = truth serves your purpose.

I'm not crazy about Trump either, but unlike most of the world I'm not willing to trash every democratic principle left standing in order to remove him. Furthermore, the negatives to having him in office mostly involve current headlines that will be forgotten in a few months or years. The good things he may yet accomplish, on the other hand, could have lasting positive effects. Things like streamlined regulations, a level playing field with the rest of the First World for corporate taxation, and a sensible immigration policy would be completely worth having to deal with the Twitter posts and crude behavior. And frankly, getting us out of the TPP has already been worth it. It just depends on what you choose to focus on.

[Kriegsspiel]

The whole idea that Russia is a credible threat to the U.S. is laughable on its face, and thus it seems obvious to me that it's just another bogeyman manufactured by the establishment media on behalf of the military-industrial complex.

In capability, or intent?

Seems like a curious statement, regardless.

[stuper1]

The whole idea that Russia is a credible threat to the U.S. is laughable on its face, and thus it seems obvious to me that it's just another bogeyman manufactured by the establishment media on behalf of the military-industrial complex.

In capability, or intent?

Seems like a curious statement, regardless.

Both. What is their annual budget for military spending versus ours? Of course, they still have nuclear weapons, and so do we. Mutually Assured Destruction still applies.

Regarding intent, are we seriously afraid that Putin is going to invade America? It's just laughable. Of course, they are tinkering around the edges to try to get an advantage militarily and/or economically, but we do the same to them, and every other major country in the world does it too, even to their allies.

The Cold War is over. We aren't fighting the specter of worldwide Communism anymore, although even that was mainly just a pretense. We actually have a lot in common culturally with Russia. There is no reason for us to be in conflict with them.

This whole Trump-Russia thing is just a big joke.

[stuper1]

Just for fun, I quickly looked up the military spending for 2016 for the US and Russia. One was at $69 billion and the other at $611 billion. I'm pretty sure everybody knows which country has the larger budget.

An old but good book on the subject: War Is A Racket, by Major General Smedley Butler.

[Maddy]

Just for fun, I quickly looked up the military spending for 2016 for the US and Russia. One was at $69 billion and the other at $611 billion. I'm pretty sure everybody knows which country has the larger budget.

An old but good book on the subject: War Is A Racket, by Major General Smedley Butler.

Now take a look at the number of countries around the globe in which Russia has permanent military installations. (For the U.S., that number is 130, at last count.)

[Libertarian666]

Just for fun, I quickly looked up the military spending for 2016 for the US and Russia. One was at $69 billion and the other at $611 billion. I'm pretty sure everybody knows which country has the larger budget.

An old but good book on the subject: War Is A Racket, by Major General Smedley Butler.

Indeed it is. And he had first-hand experience in that subject.

[stuper1]

Right, and all this Trump-Russia hysteria is just more of the same racket, along with trying to bring down a duly elected president as you mentioned. It would seem to me that the military-industrial complex doesn't think Trump will be sufficiently hawkish to enable them to meet their growth targets.

[Maddy]

Right, and all this Trump-Russia hysteria is just more of the same racket, along with trying to bring down a duly elected president as you mentioned. It would seem to me that the military-industrial complex doesn't think Trump will be sufficiently hawkish to enable them to meet their growth targets.

That's just the surface. Underneath they are frightened that he is going to dismantle the deep state.

I agree. If you go back through the last half-century of history, a clear pattern emerges. In one form or another, some boogy-man gets trotted out on cue with the purpose of distracting the masses and of instilling such fear, uncertainty, and/or disdain for the manufactured enemy that the people will line up in support of whatever course of action the oligarchy is proposing to protect them--whether it be war, martial law, bank bail-outs, or something else.

[stuper1]

Right, and all this Trump-Russia hysteria is just more of the same racket, along with trying to bring down a duly elected president as you mentioned. It would seem to me that the military-industrial complex doesn't think Trump will be sufficiently hawkish to enable them to meet their growth targets.

That's just the surface. Underneath they are frightened that he is going to dismantle the deep state.

I agree. If you go back through the last half-century of history, a clear pattern emerges. In one form or another, some boogy-man gets trotted out on cue (N Korea) with the purpose of distracting the masses and of instilling such fear, uncertainty, and/or disdain for the manufactured enemy that the people will line up in support of whatever course of action the oligarchy is proposing to protect them--whether it be war, martial law, bank bail-outs, or something else.

the trump hawkishness toward N Korea gives me reason to doubt the MIC deep state is really worried about trump. the regulatory deep state and the political establishment corruption/pervert deep state seem to have more to worry about... and thats a good thing even if it doesn't strike at the heart of this countries deep state problems..

North Korea may be the real deal, and I don't blame Trump for being hawkish toward Kim Jong Un, but seriously, do we really think that KJU is going to nuke one American city and give up his stranglehold on power in NK?

He probably just wants to have a bargaining chip so he doesn't get offed like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi. Who can blame him for that? Of course, he deserves a lot of blame for starving his own people, but unless we plan to go in and supposedly establish democracy there, there's not a whole lot we can do about that. Look how well that plan worked out in Iraq.

In my humble opinion, the biggest acute threat to US security by far is that Islamic terrorists get ahold of a nuclear weapon and detonate it in a large US city. I hope and pray that our people are much more focused on trying to stop that than worrying about Russia or North Korea attacking us. We should definitely be working with Russia to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, because Russia has the same concern.